Thursday, October 4, 2012

The cost of cancer care

New drugs are developed which offer hope to many with late stage cancers. You can't really put a price on a human life and some how I think that drug manufacturers know this so they have no problems charging these outrageous prices. One was $120,000 for FOUR doses. Another is $10,000 per month. A third is $80,000/year.

If you are in a clinical trial you get the drugs free. So obviously they can afford to give them away. So if you are paying are you paying for the free ones that went to other people and for all the research costs? I wonder what these cost outside the US. There should be some kind of global pricing standard for medications.

And then for these drugs a success rate of 40-50% is considered good. It means the patients are still alive.

The whole hope is to keep patients alive but if they die bankrupt because of their medical bills they probably couldn't afford much in the last few weeks to enjoy life?

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About Me

Married to the most wonderful man.
My list of ailments so you can keep up: slowly healing left sprained ankle, right knee partially torn ACL, left knee osteoarthritis, bursitis both hips, lymphedema issues left arm, tennis elbow right arm, degenerating disks in my back - a chronic issue that cannot be repaired by surgery and only the symptoms can be treated and some weird neuro muscular issues that causes all kinds of pain in my upper back. Oh, and then there is that cancer thing twice now... But I'm still here.

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If you want to follow my story and ramblings through the medical world, you need to start reading the oldest post first which is at the very bottom or you can jump to it by going to June 2007 and look for 'My Big Announcement'. I started this blog so I could keep my friends and family up on my dealings with breast cancer but now it has evolved into my take on the medical world as well as my medical ups and downs. I have not listed my email address but if you know me, you know how to contact me. I always welcome emails. You can also find me on Twitter @carolinemfr and on Facebook. Otherwise, feel free to leave a comment!

But no I do not write about suggested topics or other people's blogs or other ailments so do not bother asking. Sorry.